Here are some more nuggets from the address mentioned in the previous post. Johnson goes to some length to exhort young pastors to remember their place. He is no enemy of pastoral authority; but he does take dead aim at abuse of authority. He writes: “Let no Baptist preacher ever seek to reimpose these barriers …
While visiting Refiner’s Fire Bookshop in Louisville this summer, the owner, my friend, Ron Sloan, pointed me to a real jewel. It was Wylie C. Johnson’s “Tharp Lecture” at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary entitled “The Preacher From the Layman’s Viewpoint” (Feb. 24, 1954). It was a simple, paperback booklet. I don’t know anything about …
Continue reading ‘Wylie C. Johnson, “The Preacher from the Layman’s Viewpoint” (1954)’ »
Dispelling the Tyranny: The Sequel to When the Morning Came, Piet Prins (Inheritance Publications, 1994), pb., 152 pp. As mentioned in the subtitle, this is the sequel to When the Morning Came, which we really enjoyed. In this book Martin, his father and Boudewyn are not satisified with their safety in exile but long for …
As we labor for the renewal of the Church, for a return to Biblical thinking and practice, it is easy to get discouraged. The progress is often slow, people sometimes oppose, we see our own weakness and failures, and we can begin to wonder if we are doing anything worthwhile. We can be tempted to …
Robertson is probably the most prominent New Testament scholar to emerge from Southern Baptist ranks. He was not an ivory tower academician, however. His concern that study be translated into good preaching for the building up of the church is evident throughout his work. In fact on my count, his published works fall primarily into …
Continue reading ‘A. T. Robertson on the Value of Greek for Preachers’ »
To follow the previous post, here is a quote from C. S. Lewis where he is making the point that the worst sins are often not the obvious ones, but can often be masked in religiosity. Lewis specifically mentions the pleasure of power, which is a good warning to anyone in leadership. This quote is …
Continue reading ‘C. S. Lewis on the Emptiness of External Religion’ »
On our recent vacation I read Letters of Geerhardus Vos . I will be posting a full review soon, but I wanted to go ahead and make one observation from the book. The biographical sketch and letters show Vos concerned about churches who retained a conservative profession but whose preaching consisted merely of moralisms. Liberalism …
Recently I was sent the following quote from Oswald Sander’s Spiritual Leadership. “If a man is known by the company he keeps, so also his character is reflected in the books he reads. A leader’s reading is the outward expression of his inner hungers and aspirations.” (104) How true it is! It is for this …
Here is a great quote from Luther’s preface to his commentary on Romans on the nature of true faith. This is such a needed truth in our day, when people think they have saving faith because they have walked an aisle, prayed a prayer or even been baptized but there are no active results to …